


Dragon Blazers III

by ArgentDandelion



Category: Deltarune (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Deltarune Saves and Resets, Fiction, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hospitals, Illnesses, Parent Death, Sad, Some Humor, Terminal Illnesses, Time Travel, Video & Computer Games
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:01:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23465818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArgentDandelion/pseuds/ArgentDandelion
Summary: Kris calls Noelle and insists she skip school tomorrow, so she can play Dragon Blazers III with her father for the whole night.
Relationships: Noelle Holiday & Rudy Holiday
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15





	Dragon Blazers III

“Noelle.”

“Wha—? Kris, it’s 3:00 AM....” Noelle squinted at the clock in the darkness, rubbing her eyes absent-mindedly.

“Skip school today. Go to your dad.” They sounded urgent. Telegraphic. Firm.

Noelle’s ears perked up. “What? Why?”

“Bring Dragon Blazers III.” She tensed They spoke so abruptly...like it was a _command_.

“Kris?! Kris, what are you...?” Noelle frowned, and held the phone firmly against her ear in the darkness.

“Now!” At the other end, Kris sounded...strained, as if struggling against some immense weight. “Noelle, go!”

“Alright, Kris, I’ll—”

A monotone beep. Kris had hung up.

\---

“Dad? Dad?” Noelle gently shook her father from his sleep.

Rudy opened his eyes, half-lidded with drowsiness. The lamp was on, beaming light into his face.

“Dear?” he asked. “Come on, Dad!” Noelle feigned annoyance, her ears flipped half-back. “We all know we’re deer monsters.” One of Noelle’s ears twitched, and she hastily sidestepped a table to turn the TV on.

Dimly, Rudy noticed the furniture setup was different from what he remembered. He glanced across the room: the flowers in the glass cover had been put on the small counter by the sink, leaving the angel doll a little askew in the crowded space. The small bedside table had been shoved away, next to a TV set into the wall. The Nontondo console was placed on top of it, its cables leading up to the TV Noelle was fiddling with now.

Emblazoned on the TV screen were the words “Dragon Blazers III”.

Noelle sat down on the chair beside the bed: yet another furniture rearrangement. Rudy yawned. How had he not woken up from all this noise and hustle...?

“I didn’t want to wake you up until I got the game set up. You..needed the rest.”

Rudy blinked and yawned again. “And why are you waking me up in the middle of the night?”

Noelle looked sheepish. “It’s...not _technically_ the middle...it’s 3:20 AM.”

Just then Rudy noticed the bags under his daughter’s eyes, her messy hair, and the few crumbs stuck to the fuzz of her upper lips. _Strange. She normally washes her face...must have been in quite a hurry._

Rudy raised an eyebrow. “Well, still late.”

The bedsheets wavered as he adjusted his legs, laboriously propping himself up more on the bed. Noelle looked at him with a frown. She then moved the tacky little chair closer to the bed, and cringed at the squeak. Noelle smiled, and handed her father the other controller.

She yelped. “Oh! Darn! It’s a single-player game!”

Noelle’s face fell, but Rudy only smiled. “That’s alright. I can always watch. You’re much better at these games than I am, anyway.”

\---

“ _Are you always this grimy, or is this a special occasion?”_

In the game, all the party members groaned. Noelle’s brow furrowed in mock exasperation.

“Gosh darn it, Shella.”

Rudy frowned at her. “Watch your mouth, young lady.”

The room broke into laughter. Rudy’s ears flailed out, and with a bug-eyed look Rudy coughed out the remains of a laugh trapped in his throat.

\---

 _They had traveled deep into the dungeon in the bowels of the earth. Suddenly, the claustrophobic halls expanded into a greater room_....

"A cutscene!”

Noelle perked her ears up and forward, leaning closer to the TV. She sat there for a few seconds, straining her ears, but the sound had been turned too low for that sweet, sweet cutscene music.

“Oh, darn. Wish I could hear the music."

"Oh, Noelle, you can turn it up. I'm one of the only two patients here. And I'm sure it won't bother the other guy."

Noelle adjusting the hospital TV’s buttons the old-fashioned way—she couldn’t find the remote in time.

Atmospheric music ran through that quiet hospital room.

_"You've plagued our land for too long! I will stop you!"_

Rudy waited quietly. "You're right. It _is_ lovely music."

Smiles filled their vision as they enjoyed the scene together.

A room away, a patient quietly fumed and flailed his limbs, ranting again. Muffled as it was through the sounds of battle, and laughter, and conversation, none heard him.

\---

 _Swarms of Modiglettes tread towards them in the darkness_.

Noelle tensed up with a little “eep”, and Rudy turned to his daughter’s terrified face. “What are you waitin’ for? Flamaga ‘em!”

Noelle shook off her fear...and decided to upgrade the spell to Flamaja, for good measure. The enemies soundly defeated (no kill was overkill for a Modiglette), the party cheered on the victory screen.

"Creepy! Just like that angel doll!"

"Heh, you think so?” Rudy said with relief. “I thought so myself—but didn't say it!" Rudy glanced toward that faceless angel doll on the counter top, still a little askew after all those hours beside the flowers.

Rudy noticed, just then, the petals falling from the wilting bouquet...onto that letter enclosed within.

"Kris...they're a good kid."

"Earlier, they told me to come visit you." Noelle replied offhand.

Noelle had never seen her father’s brows rise higher. "Well, _that's_ a reversal of the typical role. For how much you’ve said about them arriving late to class...I never thought they’d wake up so early.”

\---

As Noelle defeated foe after foe, progressing on her journey, she spoke less and less. The same went for her father. He reclined in his bed, his head heavy.

Noelle said nothing. Maybe the video game was too engrossing, maybe she was pretending not to notice, maybe...

Noelle stiffened in her chair.

“Dad? You haven’t said anything in a while. Should I...should I say something?”

“Oh, you don’t have to narrate _everything_ ,” her father said. “It’s not like you’re playing it for an Internet audience.”

“After all, video games can be...” Her father looked down before looking back at her. “a solitary activity.”

\---

“ _T_ _HE END”_ , it said.

Noelle stared at the screen. “What happens next?” Noelle asked, her voice laden with tension.

The pause went on just a little too long.

“....Y’know...I like to think they all went home after beating the final boss, and enjoyed how everything went back to normal.”

Noelle looked down, then towards the window, away from him. Still, her body faced the screen, and her hands still clenched the controller.

“...I don’t think it went back to normal.” Noelle swallowed. “I don’t think it _can_ really be normal. Even if the land is at peace again, they...still left their villages and their cities and traveled _everywhere_. They still fought lots and lots of bad guys, and learned so much. I...” Noelle paused, and her ears slowly flicked. “It must be weird. Going back home at Level 80, and not being scared of the Level 3 dire rats. Not even a little.”

“I suppose ‘normal’ was the wrong word. I suppose all they can hope for is...peace.” Rudy looked out into the distance, up towards the ceiling. “That it’s finally all done. All the danger, all the tension....it’s resolved.”

Rudy closed his eyes. His body moved, just a little, as he took a deep breath.

Noelle gently set the controller down. She stared out into the hospital window—the sky was getting lighter.

“Why couldn’t it last forever...?” she muttered to the air.

After a few moments, Rudy opened his mouth. “You know those phone games? I think Choco Smasher was one...what do you think about them?” Rudy looked at her from the corners of his eyes, still propped up on the bed’s headboard. He didn’t move his neck.

“They’re pointless. They keep going forever...any progress is just meaningless.” Confusion clouded Noelle’s eyes, and she looked away.

“I know you would’ve liked the game to last a little longer, but...I still think it was fun.” Noelle lifted herself up from the chair, carefully setting the controller down, and sat by her father’s side.

“It was nice to see how the characters unfolded, the effects their actions had on the world, and how, in the end, all their efforts mattered. They saved the world, just as they were trying to do. You can’t do that in Choco Smasher. It’s designed to be random. Meaningless. Endless.” Rudy looked forward and closed his eyes.

Then, suddenly, there was a weight on Noelle’s hands, and Noelle’s eyes went wide open.

Her father weakly squeezed Noelle’s hand, looking straight at her with a wan smile.

“It’s impossible for a game to mean anything if it never ends.”

\---

It was a dim, quiet morning: the perfect time for a lazyhead like Kris to lounge about, doing nothing but enjoying life.

But they weren’t in bed. Not today.

Kris found Noelle standing by the window, light streaming past her silhouette in the early morning light. The curtains, not quite closed, billowed gently beside her shoulder blades, like the wings of an angel. Just a few motes of dust were caught in the sunbeam, floating behind her. Though Noelle and the curtains blocked the view now, Kris knew what it was like outside: a cloudless, blue November sky, crisp air, and gorgeous orange foliage. The sunrise had just finished: the day had only just begun. The day was building up to be perfect.

The bed felt empty.

The two of them stood, two islands in a quiet ocean. Kris stared at Noelle’s back for a few moments, watching the soft billowing of the curtains. There were a few tangles in her hair, normally so well-combed. In the distance, a bird chirped, probably on the building’s roof.

Finally, Kris’s voice bobbed up through that silence, that still ocean between them.

“Did finishing the game with your dad make you happy?”

Noelle tilted her head to the side a little in thought.

“No. Not...happy.” She spoke in a weak voice drained of tears. “I...I’m just less _sad_. It’s not something I’ll regret never getting to do.”

Noelle didn’t look away from the window. The moment carried on: her staring out into the world, Kris staring at her back, the curtains billowing, the birds chirping. Absently, Kris noticed the furniture had been rearranged. The quiet moment stretched out like a lazy morning: like reaching for a coffee, or reading the paper in a chair, or absently munching on breakfast as one enjoyed the gentle morning sun. Kris forgot what time it was, but it didn’t matter: it was those few minutes when nothing was urgent, when no one was rushing, when a person could sit or stand and just...be _alive_.

What did Noelle see, in one of the best views in all of Hometown? The houses below? The woods beyond?

“Thank you, Kris.” Noelle said quietly, as if something had just occurred to her.

Noelle’s ears floated up. A few seconds passed, and Noelle turned around.

“Kris, how did you know—”

But Kris was gone.

\---

Everyone knew it was coming.

Kris stood stiffly in the doorway, a sense of unease building in their mind, in their body, in their feet. The sterile light of the hospital hallway coated the floor, but the room seemed to block the light from going any further than Kris’s feet. The room’s own lights were off, and closed gauze curtains muffled the late morning sun. The room still held those wilted flowers in the vase, even though several petals had fallen. Somehow, the place felt full of dust: memories, long gone.

At first, the room seemed unoccupied. Then, Kris caught a soft, high-pitched noise. Kris took an unsteady step, then another, into the still room. In the corner, far away, half-hidden behind the sink...was Noelle. She was sobbing, kneeling, and concealing her face under a waterfall of hair, her arms wrapped around her body. A thought occurred to Kris, unbidden, that her hair was _beautiful:_ long, and blond, and finely combed, and increasingly stained with tears and snot.

Kris looked forward—just a glance—in the center of the room.

The bed felt empty.

Despite the furniture, despite the decorations, despite the two living, breathing people within it...the sheer _emptiness_ of the room stretched on and on.

Kris swallowed, and took a step, and braced themselves. But nothing could fill the void. They swallowed again. But any comforting words they could say was, too, swallowed up in their throat... in their brain...by that void between them. Only one thing, one mundane little thing, bubbled up through Kris's mind.

“...Noelle?” Kris called out softly.

Noelle tried to stifle a sob. “I never got...never got...” She paused a little too long, and when she spoke, it was quieter. “Never got to finish Dragon Blazers III with him.”

Kris lingered as Noelle sobbed, tucking herself even tighter into her own body. Her ears drooped. Her sobs soared. Her sounds of sorrow cut through the silence, the emptiness, but it seemed to instantly stitch itself back together whenever she paused for breath.

It was...endless.

Kris paused, tilting their head just a fraction of an inch.

“How long would it take to finish Dragon Blazers III?” It was a mundane inquiry. As if nothing was wrong. As if the air itself wasn’t empty, as if they didn’t fear they would drown in the silence.

Noelle sniffed. In a brittle voice, a voice that somehow crept out from her three shields against the room’s void, she said:

“...It’s...pretty big. About eight hours, I-I think.”

“If you could finish the game with your father, would you?”

“I would. I’d do _anything_ for it.”

\---

Kris lifted the blanket, and opened the cage, and shoved their SOUL back in.

**Author's Note:**

> This work was made with the beta-reading help of [Batter-Sempai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/batter_sempai/pseuds/batter_sempai) and [Ihasafandom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ihasafandom/pseuds/Ihasa).
> 
> The author's Tumblr account: [Tumblr](https://argentdandelion.tumblr.com/).


End file.
